Inbox: Daley's golden parachute, and a snarky look at charter schools

Daley's golden parachute

Re: "Daley joining law firm he previously hired for city's meter deal and other privatization work," posted by Mick Dumke, June 1

Nice to see the guy land on his feet. —FGFM

The system works. —MrJM

How do you expect Daley to get by on his $100,000-a-year U. of C. salary and his $184,000 annual government pension? It's expensive to live in the city—have you seen the price of parking downtown? —Jason Guthartz

You say po-tay-to,
I say po-tah-to . . .

Re: "The publicly funded charter school that says it's not really public," by Ben Joravsky, June 2

While reading Ben Joravsky's article about teacher organizing at Chicago charter schools, I was really disappointed in his "primer" on the nature of charter schools. My understanding is that the purpose of a primer is to provide an introductory and balanced explanation of a topic in order to educate and frame a discussion. The author gave a fairly snarky and obviously biased perspective criticizing charters, their expulsion process, and teacher firing policies. While these are all valid opinions that one might have about charters, they are extremely debatable and overgeneralized points, and not facts. This type of "primer" would clearly color a reader's impression of what charter schools are before even getting to the heart of the argument. It felt like I was reading more of an editorial piece and/or the author's personal opinion rather than an informative news article. I think the Reader should make it more clear which one they're getting, or just tell us if you're using the word "primer" in a sarcastic way.

As someone who has worked in both neighborhood schools and charters, I get the arguments on both sides of this important debate. But this issue needs to be fairly framed in order to have a real discussion on the future of education reform. Mr. Joravsky failed to do that in this article, and I expect the Reader to do a better job at providing actual primers on important features of Chicago. —Anthony Shaker